Australian govt. to ask for voluntary sharing of encrypted Apple dataJuly 17, 2017 - 18:51 AMT PanARMENIAN.Net - Australia's attorney general will reportedly meet with officials from Apple later this week in a bid to gain voluntary sharing of encrypted data with the country's spy and law enforcement agencies, AppleInsider said. While voluntary assistance is preferable, the Australian government is still working on legislation that will give it "coercive power," Attorney-General George Brandis told Sky News. "It's not good enough frankly for anyone to hide behind the fact that there is a new technology that enables these communication to be encrypted, to say I'm sorry we're not prepared to cooperate with you," he argued. Apple is unlikely to provide any voluntary data beyond what it already shares with government agencies when served with a legal request, such as email and photos stored on iCloud accounts. Services such as iMessage use end-to-end encryption, meaning that by definition, only the sender and the recipient have keys —Apple would have to rewrite its software to provide useful content. Likewise, the company has famously resisted building any deliberate backdoors into the full-disk encryption on iOS devices, claiming that doing so would just weaken product security and expose its customers to attacks and unwarranted surveillance. By November Australia's ruling party will propose legislation requiring companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google to hand over communications data when presented with a court order, in the same way as telecoms firms. Brandis has suggested that the law can be enforced without backdoors, but that may difficult or impossible given the growing prevalance of end-to-end encryption. Top stories Yerevan will host the 2024 edition of the World Congress On Information Technology (WCIT). Rustam Badasyan said due to the lack of such regulation, the state budget is deprived of VAT revenues. Krisp’s smart noise suppression tech silences ambient sounds and isolates your voice for calls. Gurgen Khachatryan claimed that the "illegalities have been taking place in 2020." Partner news Most popular in the section | European Parliament to discuss repression in Azerbaijan The European Parliament will discuss repression of civil society in Azerbaijan on April 24 PACE wants concessions from Azerbaijan to accept Baku back A PACE co-rapporteur said that Azerbaijani authorities must make certain concessions so that the country can return to PACE. Cyprus parliament honors Armenian genocide victims Acting House President Zacharias Koulias noted that April 24 marks the “black anniversary” of the Armenian genocide. Armenia PM, France envoy discuss regional matters Issues related to the consistent development of Armenia-France cooperation were discussed. |